Here’s the abstract for a new article of mine arguing that Rucho — along with much of the Court’s other election law jurisprudence — should be understood as the product of the Court’s aversion to Carolene Products-style pro-democratic judicial review.… Continue reading

Earlier today, the North Carolina legislature approved remedial maps to replace the state house and state senate plans that were recently struck down as partisan gerrymanders. PlanScore assessed the remedial maps, and here are the results. For the state house,… Continue reading

Remarkably, yesterday’s decision striking down North Carolina’s state legislative maps as partisan gerrymanders was the eighth straight ruling against gerrymandering by a state or lower federal court. Florida and Pennsylvania state courts preceded yesterday’s decision by a three-judge North Carolina… Continue reading

My latest for Slate (though not the title I would have chosen). I first describe the new gerrymandering techniques we may see after Rucho: Let’s start with the schemes we’re likely to see now that the federal courts have been… Continue reading

Ruth Greenwood in the Fulcrum: Last year the court told us in Whitford that it wanted us to develop further evidence to explain the harms to individual voters of the Wisconsin gerrymander. Consequently, my team has spent the last… Continue reading

In a nice post about the Court’s Census decision, Rick Pildes noted that Chief Justice Roberts approached the case in a realist fashion, probing beneath the surface to figure out what actually did and would happen. This realism was entirely… Continue reading

Will Baude has an intriguing post suggesting that, even after Rucho, federal partisan gerrymandering claims can still be brought in state court. The rationale is that federal jurisdictional doctrines like standing, mootness, and justiciability don’t apply in state court. So… Continue reading

In its decision last year in Whitford, the Court provided all kinds of clues about what a successful partisan gerrymandering claim would look like. It would be district-specific, not plan-wide. That way it would be congruent with the standing inquiry… Continue reading

I’ll have more to say about the Court’s appalling opinion in Rucho in Rick’s symposium next week. But I want to flag one point now: the Court’s erasure of racial vote dilution doctrine. This is the doctrine that allows groups… Continue reading

After today’s disastrous decision, here are some things that line-drawers could do in the future: Instruct a computer algorithm to generate huge numbers of maps that comply with all nonpartisan criteria and produce as large and durable an advantage as… Continue reading

In his dissent in today’s decision in Gundy v. United States, Justice Gorsuch repeatedly claims that excessive congressional delegation to agencies threatens to undermine congressional accountability. “[B]y directing that legislating be done only by elected representatives in a public… Continue reading

Chris Warshaw for Monkey Cage: There are several ways to measure partisan advantage in a districting plan, including the efficiency gap, partisan symmetry, declination and the mean-median difference. These metrics all capture distortions in the vote-seat relationship.… Continue reading

One recurring argument in the ongoing debate over partisan gerrymandering suits is that, if they can be brought, they will inundate the federal courts. Wisconsin advanced this floodgates claim in Whitford, asserting that courts would have to engage in “unprecedented… Continue reading

Today’s decision striking down Ohio’s congressional districts as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders is notable in several respects. First, it was again unanimous. By my count, this is the fourth consecutive decision (following those in Maryland, Michigan, and North Carolina) in which… Continue reading